Ce qui m'intéresse là-dedans, c'est qu'ils disent que le vaisseau est propulsé par l'énergie électrique que le nucléaire produit. Vas-t-on un jour voir des avions sur Terre, des avions électriques non polluantes? Il faudrait juste pouvoir trouver une source d'électricité assez puissante et non-polluante pour alimenter les avions et surtout trouver comment stocker la quantité énorme d'énergie que ça prend pour faire un voyage dans un avion commercial.

Ce qui m'intéresse là-dedans, c'est qu'ils disent que le vaisseau est propulsé par l'énergie électrique que le nucléaire produit. Vas-t-on un jour voir des avions sur Terre, des avions électriques non polluantes? Il faudrait juste pouvoir trouver une source d'électricité assez puissante et non-polluante pour alimenter les avions et surtout trouver comment stocker la quantité énorme d'énergie que ça prend pour faire un voyage dans un avion commercial.

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The world's first solar sail spacecraft takes flight on Tuesday, launched by space enthusiasts who cobbled the privately funded mission together on $4 million and an untested theory that light can power limitless space exploration.

Cosmos 1, a disc-shaped craft whose two segmented sails suggest flower petals, is set to blast off from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea at 4:46 p.m. EDT (1946 GMT) on Tuesday.

Mission controllers hope to fill each sail's four 49-foot (15-meter) segments with streams of photons, or light particles, emanating from the sun to lift Cosmos 1 to a higher orbit.

The mission's sponsors at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, think Cosmos 1's flight ultimately will prove the science-fiction conceit that sailing to the stars aboard a light-powered ship is possible.

"Our role is as the dreamers and instigators behind this spacecraft," Emily Lakdawalla, project operations assistant, said on Monday.

"It is very promising technology but one that nobody is really pursuing into space. All we are trying to do is to demonstrate that the technology can work," Lakdawalla said.

The project started as a dream held by Planetary Society founders Carl Sagan, the late astronomer and science writer, and Louis Friedman, who proposed sending a solar sail craft to rendezvous with Halley's Comet in the 1970s when he worked at NASA.

Friedman, the society's executive director, and others believed the impact from a constant stream of photons bouncing off a huge sail be enough would impel a craft through frictionless space at an ever-increasing rate of speed.

With sunlight as its only fuel, a solar sail craft could open the farthest reaches of the solar system to space travel.
Off drawing board

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the need to find commercial uses for Russia's long-range missiles helped Cosmos 1 get off the drawing board three decades later.

The project was funded mainly by an entertainment company run by Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, and by contributions from Planetary Society members and philanthropist Peter Lewis.

Cosmos 1 was built by Russian spacecraft contractor NPO Lavochkin. It will be launched in the tip of a converted intercontinental ballistic missile that was part of the Soviet Cold War arsenal. The plan is for it to orbit Earth for at least a month.

The rocket trip and a boost from a "kick motor" will put the 220.5-pound (100 kg) spacecraft into orbit about 550 miles (885 km) above Earth shortly after 1 p.m. PDT (1800 GMT).

Cosmos 1 will orbit for several days to acclimatize its instruments to the vacuum of space before its twin sails are deployed via inflatable booms. Mission controls now plan to deploy the sails late on Saturday.

Each sail is made up of eight triangular blades whose combined structure looks like a disk. The reflective Mylar sails are about 5 microns thick, or about one-quarter the thickness of a plastic trash bag.

After it deploys its sails, Cosmos 1 will be visible as it circles the Earth about once every 100 minutes.

Avec le prix du baril de pétrole qui arrive à 60$ US et le prix à la pompe de 1$/litre, il faudra bien aussi commencer à trouver des solutions pour devenir moins dépendant des énergies fossiles. On dit que la nécessité est la mère de toutes les inventions. Probablement que de plus en plus de nouvelles solutions originales feront leur apparition durant les prochaines années au fur et à mesure que le prix du pétrole augmentera. Présentement, les recherches de solutions de remplacement sont encore minimes, mais c'est parce qu'on ne ressent pas encore assez le besoin de changement. Je lisais dans le journal que la production est à son maximum et que même là les producteurs sont au bout du rouleau à cause de la demande qui augmente toujours.

PASADENA, California (Reuters) -- Cosmos 1, the first solar sail-powered spacecraft, appears to be "alive" and sending signals to tracking stations but could be in a lower orbit than planned, said mission experts in California, late on Tuesday.

Telemetry data received by three tracking stations in the Pacific Ocean, Russia and the Czech Republic seemed to show that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, mission staff at the Planetary Society said.

Mission controllers discovered after reviewing telemetry data from the stations that the craft had signaled its passage during what had been believed to be several hours of radio silence, said Planetary Society co-founder Bruce Murray.

"The good news is we have reason to believe it's alive and in orbit," Murray said. "The bad news is we don't know where it is."

Earlier, Cosmos 1 blasted off in a converted Russian ballistic missile from the Barents Sea at the start of a mission meant to show that a group of space enthusiasts could kick-start a race to the stars on a shoestring budget of $4 million.

It initially appeared to be lost almost immediately.

Mission controllers grew worried after several tracking stations along the path of Cosmos 1's intended orbit failed to pick up signs of the 220-pound (100-kilogram) spacecraft.

A portable tracking station in Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, manned by a volunteer with a laptop and an antenna, picked up Doppler data showing the spacecraft's velocity, but the feed was cut off as a "kick motor" apparently ignited to lift the craft into orbit.

The radio silence extended for more than six hours as mission organizers, operating from the Planetary Society's bungalow in Pasadena attempted to track the orbiter's expected path.

Another portable tracking station in the Marshall Islands also was unable to detect the craft's passage. Mission officials said radar scans of the area showed no evidence the spacecraft had exploded.

Members of the Planetary Society, the world's largest private space advocacy group, had hoped the craft, which was intended to deploy a 100-foot (30-meter) petal-shaped solar sail to power its planned orbit around Earth, would demonstrate that sunlight could fuel interplanetary space travel.

A 2001 test launch of the 49-foot (15-meter) solar sails ended in failure because of problems with the launch vehicle separating from the spacecraft.

La Chine est en pleine expansion économique, il devrait en profiter pour miser sur les nouvelle technologie energitique!

On est à l'aube de nouveaux moyens de propulsion, pensez-vous que çà relève plutôt de la science-fiction ?

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/fea ... theus.html